(video) advice on serve? 17 year - old 4 star

I have been "modifying" my serve a little in the past weeks. I had a slight knee injury and when I came back my serve was a piece of crap so I am revamping it I guess.

I know from these videos that I need to toss the ball more out and to the right because I have the tendency to toss the ball too the left which makes me off balance.

Before my injury I had a really good serve for my age .. on a good day I would probably max out at like 115mph. On my back swing, the racquet face would be facing up instead of my hand being on top of the racquet. I have fixed this to an extent but its a work in progress. I am not swinging as hard as I usually do in the video because I was focusing on technique - not power

You have a nice serve kid. Leave your left hand up longer, , really relax your wrist during your takeback and go for more trunk/shoulder turn. Trunk/shoulder turn can be enhanced by pretending you're elbowing someone in their head with your right elbow in the trophy position. No criticism here just minor tweak suggestions. Toss a little more in front (provided these are first serves). You have a good flowing motion, knee bend and get your left hip nicely pointed forward over the baseline while in the kneedend.

I think you have a very good service motion. I really like it. I hope my daughter's will get there soon.
You already knew about the toss on the first serve. Another thing I noticed is the stance.....your back foot moving back and front instead of just front. Don't think it is wrong or inefficient. This could be how you find balance/compensate on your left knee injury. If that is the case, look at the video of Isner's and Tsonga's serve above. When you want to work on exploding to come around and making contact for your first serve, I think Isner's legs pushing will preserve your left knee more. Depending on the nature of your injury but just something to think about.

Looks like you're still growing, and quite a bit too.
Meaning, your motion will change as you fill in and gain the extra 20 lbs.
Right now, stop between serves to conserve energy and load. Don't continously flow from one serve to another. In match play, you get disturbed between first and second serves.
You feet stance is well closed, but you twist your torso to face the opponent. Instead, force your toss out to the right, turning your shoulders away from the target, to allow a more lined up neutral stance. This will help later with quicker recovery, and less need for athletics to recover for the return.
Obviously, nice swing.

Looks like you're still growing, and quite a bit too.
You feet stance is well closed, but you twist your torso to face the opponent. Instead, force your toss out to the right, turning your shoulders away from the target, to allow a more lined up neutral stance. This will help later with quicker recovery, and less need for athletics to recover for the return. Obviously, nice swing.

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yep, im still growing in the past year or so I have grown a handfull of inches, and trying to gain weight is almost impossible due to my metabolism and the amount I am playing. My percent body fat is like 5.1%

And I am sure your daughter will have a great serve! What I have learned is I feel you cant teach someone (especially a junior) a motion all at once. Like building blocks, one step after they master the previous. It would be very fundamentally hard to teach someone a complex serve in a year

and thanks for the responses guys..

so these are the things I took from the responses and on my own

1) keep left hand up a little longer

2) toss more in front and to the right to explode into the court

3) [something I noticed] after the swing during the follow through my left arm is out.. when I watch pro videos, I notice that they all tuck their arm in. My best guess is balance and maybe a little extra torque.

4) bring foot back a little more.. not just behind me

5) turn torso (shoulders) a little more so I do not open them to early and lose power

That's a lot to remember the next month...
And you ALREADY have a pretty good serve...which is evolving as your grow.
The tight arm is to allow the torso to pivot quicker and free'er, like in dancing, you spin with arms in, you stop spinning with arms out.
And try to keep your examples of pros to guys within your body size. Don't need to copy Dr.Ivo or Isner serves.

Upon further review, and you might already know this.
Your body follows the serve into the court just fine.
But your prep to hit, your body is moving left to right, then changes direction as you hit to follow thru correctly. That change of direction will cause problems later, when you're a 5.5+. The problem is added complication and slight lost of ball speed.

Upon further review, and you might already know this.
Your body follows the serve into the court just fine.
But your prep to hit, your body is moving left to right, then changes direction as you hit to follow thru correctly. That change of direction will cause problems later, when you're a 5.5+. The problem is added complication and slight lost of ball speed.

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so in other words get my weight going forward into the court instead of laterally?

if thats the case then yes.. I have been working on this in coordination with my toss

Some coach's advocate lining up your feet to the target, then preloading a twist into your torso that makes you face the side fence behind your baseline. Kinda like old Tony Roche's stance, the opposite of McEnroe's. But we might not want to copy McEnroe, with his strange styles.
Feet lined up forces you to drive straight towards the opponent. Body pre loaded allow you to unload into the serve, like a spring.
I used to serve like that, hitting some pretty big serves in A tournaments 30 years ago. But I can't find that motion as I've aged. So maybe forget that dumb idea, sorry.

Some coach's advocate lining up your feet to the target, then preloading a twist into your torso that makes you face the side fence behind your baseline. Kinda like old Tony Roche's stance, the opposite of McEnroe's. But we might not want to copy McEnroe, with his strange styles.
Feet lined up forces you to drive straight towards the opponent. Body pre loaded allow you to unload into the serve, like a spring.
I used to serve like that, hitting some pretty big serves in A tournaments 30 years ago. But I can't find that motion as I've aged. So maybe forget that dumb idea, sorry.

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I think maybe a combination of both would be nice.. When I serve like I did in the video, I feel that I get more trunk loading power by getting my hip out. But when I serve more like Roche, its hard to get a nice deep trunk twist before exploding into the shot. If I combine both, it feels better because I can get my momentum going into the court while still having a good load

That's a tough one. We have to balance our efficiency of our serves to our style of play. If we drive into the court and hit it real fast, we end up 3' inside our baseline, not a great position for baseline tennis. Good for S/V, not so for our strong groundstroke games.
And hitting a "spanish style" serve, one where we stay atop the baseline after our followthru, we seldom win any easy points off our serves, needing to run back and forth along the baseline multiple times just to win ONE point.
I can't seem to hit Roche's style of serve either. I'd rather back into my serves with an extremely closed service stance similar to yours, and rush net.
But I KNOW I'd be more efficient with a more neutral stance, and get into service line position quicker and with less energy using old Roche's stance.
Your serves look into the 110's now, so barely slower than before. Given another 6 months, and 3" of growth, easy into the 120's, with your current stance and steady practice.
It's just that I hate the service stances of all the ex college players who are on the futures circuit nowadaze. Just overly complicated and not efficient like the serve techniques of Ferrer, Hewitt, Ferrero. Those guys might not have the biggest serves, but do have the biggest serves for their size.
Seems AndyRoddick uses less torso twist, but more stomach crunch, to get his power. But he's also an ape armed specimen, and one of a kind.
Wish I had an answer for you, but you'll have to experiment with your stance and swing to keep you power, and to uncomplicate the motion.

Hope you don't mind me bugging you again....
One thing that got me some success in higher level tourneys was practice ideas....we practiced the full motion on our serves, and not stopped after hitting our serves to watch it.
Meaning, when we practiced serves, we'd followthru and head for the service line, stop, and start a splitstep, not necessarily doing one. This forces us to finish our serve motion, instead of watching where our ball goes, so in match play, we followthru and complete the whole motion.
If you choose to stay back and react after serving, you serve and followthru, then go right into a balanced splitstep on each and every practice serve, so you do it every time in match play.
Kinda like McEnroe, you know he's coming to net. He serves, misses, but still runs all the way to almost the service line.
Hope this helps, it might not. I don't do it, but I'm 63 and headed downhill.

Hope you don't mind me bugging you again....
One thing that got me some success in higher level tourneys was practice ideas....we practiced the full motion on our serves, and not stopped after hitting our serves to watch it.
Meaning, when we practiced serves, we'd followthru and head for the service line, stop, and start a splitstep, not necessarily doing one. This forces us to finish our serve motion, instead of watching where our ball goes, so in match play, we followthru and complete the whole motion.
If you choose to stay back and react after serving, you serve and followthru, then go right into a balanced splitstep on each and every practice serve, so you do it every time in match play.
Kinda like McEnroe, you know he's coming to net. He serves, misses, but still runs all the way to almost the service line.
Hope this helps, it might not. I don't do it, but I'm 63 and headed downhill.

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No I don't mind.. I actually appreciate it, but the split step after serve sounds like a good idea or just practicing serves. Thanks for all the tips and hopefully I will see you around the forum.